Rare Seeds
by riveroad
Summary: I took the last five minutes of 5x08 very literally and ran with it. Pretty much pointless, mindless fluff wherein Spike and Winnie hang out and overuse the word 'weird'. Also, Spike and Jules have a little chat and the rest of the team is chilling in the background. One shot, rated for language.


Once Spike sees something, he has a really hard time unseeing it. That's how it was when Lew took his girlfriend's advice, Spike's first year at SRU – so Lew and women's underwear, that's one thing he's never unseen (that girlfriend didn't last too long, if Spike's memory serves him correctly).

It's that way with Winnie, Leah opening this door that he's been wedging closed for years, light spilling into a hallway he never wanted to enter.

It's one of those things that he can't unsee, Winnie with her hair pulled back, tossing pen caps at him as he leans on her desk, so pretty he almost can't look at her (but can't look away either). She's got no concept of personal space, will literally lean over and take a bite out of his sandwich if she feels like it, does the same thing to Jules (well, she did _once_) and Spike never realized that having Winnie nibble on a donut and then hand the rest to him with teeth marks in it was A Thing until Leah went and pointed it out.

He's almost angry at her, for going and ripping off layers and layers of self-preservation, Winnie totally turning him down. But then, it's bittersweet, all perfect guy and that smile, and he has to admit that yes, he likes being the one to put it on her face. Probably why he spends so much time talking to her, likes to make her laugh so hard she spits water or coffee, chokes on her food. It's stupid and childish but he looks into those wide eyes and he can't help it.

They text each other on their days off, probably something he started but she always writes back, uses those stupid emoticons he flat out draws the line at (although, okay, he may have sent her some smiley faces before, once, one too many with Raf and Sam a hundred years ago, before Raf got pushed too far).

He tries harder than he's ever tried at anything to keep things the same between them after that night and he thinks he does a pretty good job at it, to be honest. He sees the trepidation on her face the morning after 'I don't date cops' and so he smiles, same as he always does, makes a really lame joke that is at the very bottom of his best material and she laughs, relief bouncing from cheek to cheek.

He grins at her as he backs all the way to the locker room and then he opens his locker and sticks his whole head and shoulders inside, lets the smile leak right off his face. Because nothing's the same and he'd like to point out that the second Leah pointed _this _out to him, everything changed. So. This is probably Leah's fault.

Leah laughs right in his face when he tells her that, doesn't take offence at all, pats him on the shoulder and says, "So change her mind."

He feels like an idiot at that because it never occurred to him that he'd be able to do anything of the sort. "I don't know if-"

"You just gonna give her up that easy?" Leah's eyebrows are up, disbelief all over her face and like disappointment too, like she'd expected better, or more, or something.

"I'm not _giving her up_-" he starts saying, is about to tell her that Winnie's not his to give up.

"You kind of are. 'Magine what would have happened if you'd given up SRU just cause you got turned down the first time." At the look on his face she huffs, rolls her eyes. "You made it your first time through? Sometimes, I find you really annoying, Scarlatti."

He snorts.

"Okay well. If _I'd_ quit trying just cause I got turned down my first time through, I wouldn't be here. You may want to think about that."

He does. Way too much. Spends days and days thinking about it and finally recognizes that she might actually have a point. He doesn't know what to do about it though. Just leaves it there and so every time he talks to Winnie, he tries to psychically convince her that she wants to throw her rule out the window _for him_. He's pretty sure it's not working.

Winnie's nosey, will read his postcards even if he doesn't show her and so he likes to stand right there when she reads them (his Ma always liked her, god knows she spent enough time talking to her on the phone but it was always, "How come you never bring over that girl with the pretty voice? Hm?" And at the time, he was like 'Ma, _what_?' had never even considered Winnie as the girl with the pretty voice but now he wonders if his Ma just saw right through him instead). Sometimes, when he drops them at her desk to put with the outgoing mail, she'll add a line, her handwriting big and neat next to his.

He lets her think that things between them are back to normal but he watches her all the time, thinks about her all the time and every thought that's not work related is about how to get her to change her mind.

He comes up with stupid shit, hacking her phone and her computer, turning up at her apartment but he wants her to want him, not look at him like a stalker. He thinks about sending her gifts, chocolate and flowers but then he thinks about how she likes to pay for her own drinks and figures that that's not going to go over well either.

So he's pretty much still at square one, no idea if there's even a square two, Leah's totally useless, just shrugs and says she's usually the one who does the asking and Jules and Sam are having some kind of crisis together and he doesn't want to go get in the middle of it so. He's screwed, basically.

Winnie catches him at the front doors one night, melancholy about his Dad and thinking about things that should be different but aren't and she looks at him and says, "I'm going to get dinner. You wanna come?"

Vegan restaurants are decidedly not his thing but she pushes him inside with an eye roll, tells him to just shut up and order and that the dessert is the best thing ever and will change his life.

Half way through their appetizers (and like, okay, even he can admit that this weird soy meat stuff isn't really that bad, even if he would rather be eating actual animal), she looks up and says, "I went to a wedding like eight months after my dad died. Saw the bride walking down the aisle and had to leave the room. So. Just in case that's what's got you looking like that. Pretty sure it's normal. And if not normal, at least you're not the only one."

He clears his throat and then tells her about Lew, not the stuff that's in the transcripts, the other stuff, the stuff he's never told anyone else before. About how angry he was at first because it sure beat being sad and then how, when the sadness hit, it felt like it would never ever end. He doesn't talk about his Dad, thinks there isn't really that much to say.

She listens in silence and then makes a face, delicate nose all wrinkled. "If you were a girl, I'd like, give you a hug. Not sure what to do that you're not."

He laughs, it's weak but it's there.

She's right about dessert.

Afterwards, when they're standing outside, both of them kind of awkward with their hands in their pockets he thinks he'd very much like to kiss her. He doesn't. But. It does very little to detract him from the way he knows he feels about her.

So when the postcard comes and she snatches it out of his hands to read, he stares at that ridiculously pretty face, the way that perfectly shaped eyebrow raises at him and hears himself pretty much asking her to come on vacation with him. Is a little lost when she agrees.

He tells Leah about it in the SUV the next day, radios turned off and she gets this grin on her face that makes him wish he'd just kept his mouth shut.

"What do I do?"

"What do you mean? Get your tickets sorted out ASAP."

He snorts but actually, she's probably onto something so that's what he does, gets home after shift and calls his Ma, talks to her for an hour, despite the time difference and when they hang up, he walks around for a little bit, his house empty and quiet and despite having it drilled into him from a young age that you don't call someone after nine pm, he does anyway.

"Spike! Hey!"

He laughs. "Hey Winnie. What are you up to?"

"Grey's Anatomy. Don't judge me," she warns. "I may be tearing up."

He laughs again. Her voice sounds clear and he thinks that his favourite dispatcher is the most sensible person he knows. "You serious about Italy?"

There's a long pause and he hears the tv on her end click off. She clears her throat. "I uh…yeah. Yes."

He grins to himself the whole time, as he sends his email and she reads it, hears her clicking through the AC website and she flat out laughs in disbelief when she's done. "Um. Okay. So. Apparently we're going to Italy."

He snickers. "It'll be fun. All that wine."

She sounds a little apprehensive when she says, "Yeah, that's not really what I was worried about."

It's the first time he thinks that maybe Leah was onto something, opening that door in the first place. The thought has him grinning right through till the next morning.

It's Jules who catches him in the locker room, both of them early and Sam sitting on the bench in the gym with a coffee, eyes still bleary.

He clears his throat. "So. Winnie and I? Going on vacation."

She raises her eyebrows and then says, "So. Sam and I? Having a kid."

His jaw drops. "Did you just one-up me?"

She laughs but she looks like, nervous or something, visibly uncomfortable and he reaches a hand out, brushes against hers.

"Wow."

She looks at him, then leans over and lays her head on his shoulder. "Thanks."

"For what?" It's just – as far as intelligent conversation goes, he hasn't really offered her anything to work with, is still caught up in that place where Jules is going to be a mom.

"Being you."

He shrugs at that. "I'm pretty fantastic, eh?"

"Not to mention modest."

"That too."

She sighs. "The Team's going to be a man down."

"Yeah. But this time it's because of something good. How many times have we been able to say that before?"

She snorts. "Always looking at the bright side."

"Always. He going to marry you?"

"You can take the boy out of Catholic school," she says with a huff.

He laughs. "I guess the question I should be asking is if you're going to marry him."

She looks at him. "It's not something I'm opposed to," she confesses quietly, voice soft.

He loops an arm around her neck, doesn't say anything else about her marrying Sam. "Wow. A baby."

She laughs, shakes her head at him. "Yeah."

He smiles.

"About Winnie?" She turns to look at him. "You just remember that it was you and me first, way before Sam and Winnie and anyone else."

He laughs, thinks of getting hazed his first day at SRU when he was scared to hit a girl, despite coming straight out of Fifty-Two, years of the beat under his belt, thinks about Jules dragging him to eat Chinese, rats running under the bench outside the restaurant, thinks about all the things that are different and all the things that are the same. "You should remember that too." He raises his eyebrows. "What did Ed say?"

She shrugs at him. "We uh. We told Sarge yesterday. Sam gets everyone else. I just wanted to be the one to tell you."

He's indescribably touched. "You guys will be great."

"Think so?"

"Know so."

She shakes her head, grins at him.

"You going to let me babysit?"

She looks like she's going to make a joke but then her face softens and she says, "Try and get out of it."

* * *

He and Winnie are both wide awake for their early flight, years and years of working shifts and never knowing when they'll end getting them into this routine where both of them go from zero to a hundred in seconds.

Winnie has no makeup on, freckles sprinkled across her nose and he thinks that it's kinda nice to stand there, no desk between them. They laugh over their passport pictures (like how good can someone look with no smile on their face – they both looked really pissed off), stand in the line chatting and not worrying one bit about whether it moves quickly or not.

They're on the plane, Spike in the window seat because Winnie hates heights and when the doors close up and it's clear that no one's going to sit in the aisle seat beside her, she doesn't move over.

He has no idea what that's supposed to mean, kind of wishes Leah was here to translate but then figures it can't be a bad thing, Winnie sitting right next to him, arm pressed against his and going on vacation with him to meet his whole family (um yeah, sorry, what was he thinking, again? This seems like a really ridiculous idea, now that they're on the plane and it's actually happening).

She falls asleep after they pick their way through plane-food breakfast, rests her head on his shoulder and he just smiles, watches a movie that he can barely follow, idly plays with some of the curls that keep ending up bouncing into his mouth.

An older guy passing through to the bathroom nods at him approvingly, says you should always let your girl sleep on your shoulder and Spike isn't about to tell him their life story or anything but he's got to admit, Winnie's cheek pressed against him and her hair smelling all nice right beneath his nose isn't a bad thing.

She wakes up a couple hours later, stretches and then grins at him. "You should have shoved my head off of you. It's what I do when I take the GO to see my mom."

He snorts. "So rude."

She grins. "Don't care. Thanks though."

She gets up to go the bathroom and he has this trivial thought like she may be wearing those yoga pants all girls seem to like wearing but they do nothing to stop him from looking (and he definitely looks, even when she's in her uniform, he looks). These are tight all the way through her hips and thighs and he catches a guy across the aisle looking too. That makes him smile to himself.

She comes back, flicks on the same movie he was watching earlier, watches it for all of fifteen minutes before she rolls her eyes and turns it off, tells him that it sucks and the main guy can't seem to decide what accent he's going to be using.

He gets up to stretch his legs, has to climb over her because she doesn't want to move, just gives him this cheeky smile and okay, so this is – she's flirting with him. He thinks, anyway, like he thought before, it would be really helpful to have Leah here, another girl to translate looks and smiles and all the rest of it.

He walks to the front of the plane, reverses and then leans on the empty chair and talks to her for a while, her chin tipped up so she can look at him. He sits back down, most people on the plane still sleeping and she gives him a sneaky little smile before she reaches into her bag and pulls out a full box of Oreos (he may have mentioned his weakness for the stupid cream filled cookies a while ago and he would really _really _like to know what it means that of all the cookies in the grocery store, she picked his favourites to bring). They eat a full row between them, talking about nothing and she has little crumbs of oreo on the corner of her mouth and she definitely doesn't flinch back from him when he brushes gently at that spot. So. Interesting.

His uncle picks them up from the airport, places two kisses on Winnie's cheeks like he's known her her whole life and she laughs even when Spike gives her an embarrassed smile, thinks she's in for a whole world more.

Except, she slots right in like she's always been there, his Ma and her outside hanging out laundry and talking over coffee in the morning when he stumbles down the stairs. He watches them for a few minutes, wonders what his Dad would have thought, wonders if he'd have been charmed by Winnie's straight white teeth and long dark hair, whether she wears it in curls or not. He thinks he probably would have been, nevermind all that crap about Michelangelo quitting the police force and finding a nice Italian girl to marry.

They hike fifteen miles on their second day there and like, even with all the training he does day in, day out, he's pretty fucking exhausted but Winnie looks as fresh as she always does, hair pulled up high like a cheerleader. He's never seen her hair like that before, thinks it does something really nice to her jaw. He wants to roll his eyes at himself.

They sightsee, even though it's a little Italian village not Rome or Venice but she seems so taken with everything she sees that it almost makes him see it differently too. They take pictures and he thinks that Winnie Camden against the setting sun, smiling in jeans and a t-shirt and her feet bare is really something.

He comes into the house one afternoon after hanging out with every single male cousin he has (all two hundred and sixteen of them, has been fielding questions all day about the girl he's brought with him, all of them nudging each other and wiggling their eyebrows) and Winnie and his Ma are cooking together, his Ma critiquing her pronunciation and Winnie laughing and then trying over and over, both of them up to their elbows in raw pasta and flour and he just leans against the doorframe and watches them for a bit, thinks his Ma looks a little less sad than she usually does.

His Ma's boasting that she taught Michelangelo to cook properly when he was a teenager because god knows his father couldn't even boil water and she had to make sure he would be okay alone one day (he rolls his eyes at this story because yes, she taught him but did she ever let him use those skills around her? Of course not, did his laundry right up to the day she left). Winnie laughs, tells her that her mom tried to teach her when she was a teenager too but she was always way too heavy handed with the salt.

His Ma clucks her tongue. "And right she was, bella, you are over salting the beef. Gently, gently."

He could stand in the doorway and watch Winnie all night long. It gives him a jolt, like he knew that his feelings hadn't changed but he's kind of getting confronted by just how much he _wants_ certain things.

He also gets this wave of helplessness like what is he going to do if she never says yes, if she goes off and finds a non-cop boyfriend, marries him, looks at him the way Ed and Sophie look at each other sometimes. Thinks he'll just have to jump off a bridge if that ever happens.

They go to the beach for a day, the Mediterranean warm and Winnie in a bikini beside him, way too toned with too much tanned skin for one person. He puts on his reflective shades and spends the whole day watching her, doesn't even feel guilty about it. Because, really, Winnie Camden in a black bikini, kicking water at him, hair all over the place and too much sun? Something he never wants to forget.

There are family dinners every single night (complete with that terrible wine his whole family seems to adore – Winnie keeps chugging it down like it's water, tells him it's really not that bad and besides, so what if it's a little bitter?) and all his aunts keep clucking at Winnie and telling her she's too skinny and then giving him dirty looks like he's the reason.

Winnie finds it hilarious.

His female cousins keep looking at her and then looking at him and giggling and honestly, has no one here ever heard of subtlety?

His Ma rolls her eyes when he complains and tells him that they're all just so excited because the last time they saw him, he was a teenager putting way too much gel in his hair and blowing things up at the bottom of the garden.

Then she looks at him deliberately and says, "Mikey, you be careful with that girl. Don't make her cry."

He's a little insulted that she seems to have absolutely no faith in him whatsoever but also, it kind of sounds like Winnie's gone and passed some kind of test no one except his mother knew she was taking.

In addition to which, he may have misjudged this whole wing-man thing because mostly, his entire family thinks they're already dating (and like, not just dating, like _serious_, like he's going to propose or something) and he's glad that half of them speak really bad English because, well, someone saying something to Winnie would just be mortifying. Worse than that.

He's watching her through the kitchen window, sun setting the night before they're supposed to fly back, ten days gone in ten minutes and he thinks he's going to miss eating every meal with her, seeing her last thing before bed, having her flick on the radio to Italian opera or jazz as they drink their coffee with the sun rising outside. He's going to miss watching her laugh with his cousins, gesture with her hands when she's chatting to his uncles, smile at him as his Ma reaches over and smoothes her hair.

Winnie's sitting in the grass, just looking out at nothing in particular and his feet have a mind of their own, walking him out to where she's leaning back on her hands.

She smiles up at him and he sits down facing her, mimics the way she's sitting. He thinks she's going to have grass stains on her white sundress, glances at long, smooth legs before he looks at her face.

"So. Back home tomorrow."

"Back home tomorrow," he echoes.

She smiles at him, glances back to where the sky is turning orange. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"When did you know?"

"Know what?"

She glances at him, looks away really quick. "That you felt like-" she breaks off, clears her throat. Her cheeks are pink, match the sky right above the stripe of orange on the horizon.

He raises his eyebrows. This is a thing they've never talked about, not here, not back home either. It's just, he asked her out, she said no and then he went on feeling the way he felt in silence. "Like we should be together?"

She huffs, gives him this exasperated look and he snickers. "I-yeah."

He shakes his head. "Told you. It got brought to my attention."

She rolls her eyes, nudges at his elbow with her knee. "Spike."

He laughs, lets her push at him a little. "I don't know. Just one of those things. It's fine."

"Took a lot to ask me though."

He nods slowly because well yeah, it did, no question, more courage than he thought he actually possessed.

"You still-uh." She exhales and then makes a face. "You still…?"

She's very cute when she's flustered, is a thing he's suddenly realizing, never having seen her flustered before. Even with all the 'Yeah no, I'm flattered' stuff, she was still _Winnie_. Or at the very least, the side of Winnie he knows best. "What do you want me to say?" he asks seriously. "What's going to make this less weird?"

"It's not…it's not that it's _weird_."

He makes a face. "It's kinda weird."

She laughs, eyes fastening onto his in a way that makes him sit up a little straighter. "I just-I thought that, you know, all that cop stuff at work. I thought it would be the same outside of work. And it's just-it's not."

He tries to categorize this the way he would a vic, how she sounds kind of confused and her brow's furrowed and her cheeks are still tinged with pink but he has no idea whatsoever where this is going, thinks everything he's hearing is getting coloured by everything he wants. "…Okay?"

She huffs at him, rolls her eyes. "Also. I thought meeting your family would be weird."

"That part _is_ kinda weird," he says, laughing and ducking as she lifts her foot to kick playfully at him. "They seem to like you though."

"Yeah? They're not like…who's this random chick you brought along with you?"

"Oh no, they are-" He laughs as she makes a face, tries to glare at him. "But. Not one of them's asked me when I'm settling down or having kids or why I'm still single, can't I keep a girlfriend so I'd say you did your job pretty well."

She laughs, sits up and crosses her legs at the ankle, looks at him seriously. "You know. That night. I…" she sighs, picks at some grass. "I had to really try not to say yes."

His eyebrows jump up. "Really."

"Don't look at me like that."

"And how am I looking at you?" he asks, leaning just a shade closer, smiling at her.

"Like that," she says and he definitely sees her eyes flick to his mouth. Which – really interesting, he's never caught that before.

"Well. I apologize for however it is you think I'm looking at you. Don't really know how to stop." He grins at her.

She swallows, looks back at where the sun is now below the horizon and then clears her throat, leans over and kisses him. Or okay, not so much kisses as just presses her lips against his. She's going to have his eyebrows way too high on his forehead forever, apparently.

"Um. Is that-"

She laughs, looks hugely embarrassed and he thinks he could just spend forever looking at that expression on her face, a little sheepish and still confused, like he's gone and made her rob a bank and she doesn't understand how. "Um-"

He leans forward, takes her chin firmly in his hand and kisses her properly, the way a girl as beautiful as Winnie Camden should be kissed. She sighs into his mouth, leans closer, loops one of those slender arms around his neck which he could definitely get used to. He's hyper conscious of being gentle with her, doesn't want to freak her out or overwhelm her or send her running for Toronto so she's the one who kisses him a little harder and he smiles at that.

He pulls away, just a little, stays in her space, lets her breathe. He likes looking at her this close up. His hand is on her jaw, just stroking her neck and she leans into it.

"So. This a thing we're doing then?"

It makes him think of Winnie in her leather jacket and boots with buckles, looking all hard and a little bad ass but then handing him a Tim's cup because she stopped for coffee on the way to work, that smile even at 5:30 in the morning. She sounds like Tough-Winnie but he sees the way her eyes flick away and then back to him and he thinks she's got to be as scared as he is, all the ways he could lose her, is all. "You're the one who doesn't date cops," he reminds her gently. But. Secretly, he wants to spend the rest of his life kissing her.

She lets out this shaky little breath, laughter maybe and then shrugs. "Yeah. I don't. Guess I'm abandoning that rule for the 'perfect guy'." She rolls her eyes at herself, voice a little mocking.

He tries not to let the grin take over his entire face, has no idea whatsoever if he succeeds or not, leans back on his palms and studies her. "Just to be clear. Am I the guy you're throwing it out the window for?"

"Don't see any other cops around here."

She's flirting with him, same way they always talk to each other. He must be the dumbest SRU officer ever, not to have realized that before Leah pointed it out to him. He has this vague memory of arm wrestling with Winnie, Lew on his other side, wonders if Lew saw it before he did (he used to bring her up a lot, Lew did. Spike had forgotten that, thought at the time that Lew had a thing for her. Now…well, now he doesn't think that anymore).

She clears her throat. "Is this going to get weird?"

He thinks about hanging around her desk, how they exchange coffee mugs mid-sip, how she once took a bite out of an apple and handed him the rest. "Pretty sure it's weirder if we don't do this."

Winnie smiles at him slowly, and he watches in fascination as it changes her face, makes her a hundred times brighter, like he should be blinded a little. Yeah, it's going to be one of those things he can't unsee. "You're just saying that to get what you want."

"Probably a little," he confesses, smiles when she laughs. "But. S'also true."

He kisses her first this time, unable to stand having her face so close to him and not reach out and touch it, she leans into him, and he thinks that if he weren't in his Ma's vegetable garden, he'd be laying her down, back against the grass, hovering over her or maybe pulling her into his lap. She inhales sharply, his tongue brushing against hers, pulls on the back of his neck to get him closer and the next time he opens his eyes, it's dark.

They walk inside, his arm around her waist and her thumb through his belt loop and his Ma gives them this silly smile, and the three of them have a glass of wine together before Winnie hugs his mother and tells her thank you, that she had the best time ever and that she's going to leave her to spend some time alone with her son, disappears up to bed and his Ma still has that silly smile on her face as she talks to him in Italian, about how this girl is something special, and not to forget that and he'd better be nice, take out her trash (and like, he rolls his eyes because what? Her trash? And it's been five minutes, literally not even a full day, there's still lots of time for Winnie to back out of this, to think about what it is she's doing and realize that he's not worth giving her rule up for) but his Ma hugs him tight, tells him that if anyone deserves to be happy, it's him.

She's biased, obviously, as all mothers are but he's missed her so he hugs her back and kisses her firmly on the cheek, tells her that he's got it and he understands.

And then she goes and says that his father would have been very proud of him if he could have learned the things that he already knows about letting go and not being bitter, about learning how to disagree with someone but loving them anyway. He pauses at that because he never realized his mother could say anything that wasn't full out positive about his Dad. She pats his cheek, tells him to bring the enormous tin of cannoli she put on the counter in his suitcase (it's already wrapped up, taped to shit, he has no idea how he's ever going to open it), for his Team. The way she says Team sounds like Family and he thinks isn't it funny that they both had to lose someone for them to understand each other.

She pulls his face down to hers, kisses him firmly on the forehead and then tells him to get some sleep because he has a lot of travelling to do tomorrow and he wants to roll his eyes because like he doesn't already know, he's not eight years old for Christ's sake but he grins, nods and goes up the stairs, lies on his back and falls asleep, dreams about Jules and Sam's kid, a little girl with bright blue eyes and dark hair, what Lew would have said about that. Winnie's standing next to him in the dream, her hand in his.

His uncle already has the car running the next morning and Spike puts both their bags in, hugs his Ma one last time. Winnie dozes in the car and his uncle pats him on the shoulder, hugs them both when they get to the airport, tells Winnie not to be a stranger and she should come back and visit, even if Michelangelo doesn't come with her and then he's gone and it's just the two of them.

Winnie tugs on his arm as he goes to pick up their bags and he smiles tentatively at her. "Yeah?"

She springs up on her toes, plants a kiss right on his lips. "Thanks. For this." And then she gives him that smile, swings his hand luggage over her shoulder and then throws on her backpack, leaves him staring after her, standing next to their suitcases.

There's still no one sitting in the aisle seat next to her but this time, Winnie turns her back to him, pulls his arm around her and falls asleep against his chest, her toes on the empty seat beside her.

He falls asleep too, his head against hers. When he wakes up, she's reading, still in the same position, only their hands are laced together.

They change planes, talk about pizza for two hours during the layover and she breaks out her camera for the last leg of the trip so they can look at all their pictures together. He's pretty sure he's got the same expression in every single one but she changes all the time, all of her smiles, beautiful in a way he almost can't fathom. She rolls her eyes when he says that but he also thinks she's a little pleased because she leans up, presses her lips to his jaw.

An hour before they land in Toronto, she sits up and looks at him very seriously. "You're not going to get weird, right?"

He snorts. "I have no idea what that means. I _am_ weird. You already know that."

"I mean weird like…you know. I don't know. Just weird."

"I'm not going to get weird," he says very patiently, still no idea what she really means but thinks it probably has something to do with them dating and working together. Maybe.

"You going to take it wrong if I say you should come over?"

"How could I take that wrong?" She rolls her eyes and he snorts. "Yeah no. I'm not going to take it wrong."

"Okay."

So they get off the plane and although he'd really like to take a shower and possibly put on some fresh clothes, he takes her home and they go up into her apartment. She glances at him, pushes her suitcase into her bedroom. "I'm going to take the fastest shower of life – you can go after me. Um. If you want."

He watches tv while she showers and she is really fast, faster than any girlfriend he's ever had at any point in his life. She hands him a clean towel that smells like her and he pokes around in her bathroom cabinet for a bit, uses her shampoo and pulls on sweats and a t-shirt out of his suitcase. She's sitting on the counter in her kitchen when he walks out towel drying his hair and she clears her throat.

"We have work tomorrow."

He raises an eyebrow at her. "Very good. Now, what letter comes first in the alphabet?"

She makes a face at him. "Oh shut up. I just meant. Like okay. Are we…'going to dinner'? Or are we like. You know."

He doesn't know, actually, and she rolls her eyes at him like he's the idiot here. "Win, I don't know what you're talking about."

Her face softens, just a little. He doesn't think anyone who hadn't made it their life's mission to notice her would have noticed it. "I just-I'm not going to freak out. Just seems like this is a thing we're really doing. So. I don't want you going and getting rid of me the next time a pretty girl smiles casually at you."

The towel's around his neck and he places both hands on either side of her, leans over and kisses her and yes, this does seem to be a thing he never wants to stop doing. "Okay then."

"Okay?"

"You and me."

She opens and closes her mouth a couple of times and then swallows. "Okay."

"Okay," he says, thinks it says a hell of a lot about them that they both know exactly what page they're on here.

They watch a movie, both of them falling asleep sometime before eight-thirty and when he wakes up, he thinks he should probably get himself home, throw on some laundry, try and get over what he knows is going to be hideous jet lag. And also, if he stays pressed against her much longer, he thinks it's going to be pretty fucking difficult to leave at all. And that being afraid of freaking her out feeling? Probably not something he's getting over today or tomorrow or the next day, either. Figures some day, though.

He lifts her easily, slides her between the sheets of her bed and her eyes flicker open as he's trying to quietly haul his suitcase out of her room.

"Spike?"

He smiles, kneels beside her just looking for a second and then leans down, kisses her very gently. "I'll come pick you up for work."

She laughs. "Sure no one will find that-"

"I don't really care," he says grinning at her.

"I'll get up, walk you out-"

"Stay," he says, kisses her again, feels pretty fucking great when she tries to pull him down to lie with her. "Tomorrow," he says, promises against her mouth and she nods, lets him tuck her in.

He goes home, grins at nothing the whole way there.

He picks her up the next morning and she hands him a travel mug, coffee the way he likes it. She squeezes his hand before they separate a little and they walk in the front doors with the backs of their hands barely touching, some kind of rule they both agreed on without ever talking about.

There are wild exclamations from Ed and Sam when he walks into the gym, Jules looking him up and down and then grinning at him. She and Leah exchange looks, Leah giving him this sly smirk and he rolls his eyes at her but also. Yes. He's grinning right back.

None of them say anything about it, not really but Ed slaps him on the chest three times and Sarge runs beside him, asks him about his family, gives him the kind of look he probably gives Dean when he brings home a good report card.

He's leaning on the desk after work out, making Winnie laugh and he thinks it's gotta be nothing but good that her cheeks are flushed and she's grinning up at him.

Leah leans against the desk on his left side, looks between the two of them and then starts laughing at absolutely nothing. She pats him on the shoulder. "I'll wait in the truck."

He waits for her to leave before he raises an eyebrow at Winnie. "So. Weird?"

She shakes her head, ponytail whipping from side to side, gives him that smile that makes his breath catch a little. "Not really that weird."

It's not, he thinks as he gets in the truck (Leah snorted at him, said she'd better drive since he looked intoxicated and really, she thinks she's funny and she's really not but he can't help but laugh because if it weren't for her, if it weren't for that mix between friend and sister, he'd never have realized that there were things he still wanted for himself), not weird at all.


End file.
